Babbles of a Lover and a Fighter

I’ve never really taken to hot beverages.  I’m usually up for something crisp and icy to quench my thirst.  This past week, however, I caught some bug or allergy or something in Dallas, and hot tea just sounded amazing.  The restaurant/bar where I work has a Starbucks right next door, so I decided to roll the dice and try something new.  The Zen green tea is pretty fantastic, although it took me awhile to actually get a first sip.

I took off the lid to blow on it and slowly tipped the cup, bringing a heatwave of steam that cooked my upper lip and plowed through my suddenly clear sinuses.  The same process happened about two or three times before I surrendered my attempts and just let the cup chill out with my sore throat remedy brewing.  I had to check on a couple of tables, and the minutes ticked by.  By the time I tentatively tried my tea again, it was perfect.  No more scalding, boiling hot lava water leaving third degree burns on my tongue.  But then, duty called, and the next time I visited my cup, I was welcomed with a lukewarm, ineffective, unsatisfying, grande cup of blah.

There is a minuscule window in which one can enjoy a hot beverage without either incinerating one’s entire mouth and throat or forcing down room-temperature, not-even-remotely-soothing liquid.  In a Starbucks paper cup, that window is probably about 4 minutes.  Maybe next time when it reaches that perfect point, I should just down it.  I might still lose some of my taste buds getting there though.  Oh, hot beverages.  Why must you hurt me so?

Jiggity jig!

Made my way up to Dallas this weekend for the annual Pabasa celebration.  Unfortunately, I left my camera at home for that particular festivity, but there was a lot more family fun time.  I drove straight to downtown Dallas for the Bodies exhibit, which was disappointingly much smaller than the Body Worlds exhibit I went to a few years ago.  I mean, Body Worlds had a guy riding a horse.  And a pregnant woman.  It’s kind of hard to beat that, especially if the exhibit is 1/5 the size.  Both of the exhibits, however controversial, were ridiculously amazing and definitely showed how resilient and complex the human body really is.  My cousin, EJ, was pretty excited about going, and I told him all about veins and arteries and the latissimus dorsi and all of that fun stuff buried somewhere in my head from that anatomy class.  He has a really good attention span when he’s interested in what you’re talking about.

My bro and mom were pretty excited as well:

As you can see in the previous picture, Friday was sunny with a slight breeze, probably somewhere in the high 60’s, lower 70’s.  Fantastic, beautiful, let’s-go-on-a-picnic weather.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I woke up to on Sunday:

Yeah, snow.  My friend, Neill, had gone up to New York and said it was sunny and in the 60’s that same day.  What in the world…?  I’m not sure if it was the wacky weather or what, but I definitely came down with something that had me pretty out of it for the entire weekend.  However, a little head cold was not enough to quell brunch and mimosas. Mmmm.

Anyway, I love when all of the Perez’s are together.  We have such good times.  We’re constantly telling jokes and laughing, either at each other or with each other…sometimes both.  My family is awesome.  I really couldn’t imagine not having this to come home to:

In lieu of Finnegan and Regulus constantly flaring up and ramming head-on into the divider of their tiny, shared quart-sized living quarters, I decided to find them a bigger and better home.  Betta fish are know for their resilience and ability to live in small bowls without a filtration system, but they were originally found in rice paddies and shallow ponds (which are rather huge) in Thailand and other parts of Asia.  If I had it my way, I would have gotten a 10 gallon tank, but budget topped it off to a Craigslisted, hexagonal 1.5 galloner.

After two failed attempts by Brandon at meeting with Dustin Fish Tank from Craigslist ending in a disappointing, “Sorry dude, already sold it to someone else,” yours truly decided to give it a go and emailed the guy to ask if it was still available…and…bingo.  We got our hands on it the next day.

The adventure really geared up once we made our way to Home Depot in search of material for the divider.  As mentioned in a previous post, Betta fish can’t live in the same tank because they would fight to the death.  We wanted something quasi-transparent and pretty sturdy, and some sort of plexiglass was our first choice.  After wandering around the entire store (twice), we eventually decided on a textured florescent light ceiling panel.  Once a plastic cutter and a yard stick were purchased, we headed back to tackle the tank.

Trial and error were the words of the day when we cut and re-cut after figuring out that the tank’s edges were not completely parallel to each other.  In fact, corner to corner at the top was about 8 and 5/8 inches, and at the bottom, it was a half an inch shorter.  We ended up cutting two trapezoidal pieces (and not the easy rectangular trapezoid), and it turned out pretty darn well if I do say so myself.

As of today, our homemade split tank seems to be holding up well.  The fish didn’t seem to be bothered by each other, and even though they could see each others’ shapes shifting on the other side of the glass, I don’t think they were aware that they’re neighbors again.  As you can see, Finnegan is sort of distorted and Regulus is being super chill:

Long story short, a few hours of nerding out engineer-style will definitely yield some awesome results.  All you need are a tank, textured florescent light panels, a plastic cutter, a straight edge, and lots of patience.  We now have a custom-made, divided Betta tank and some pretty sweet pictures of our fish.

Until next time, this is another Domestic Adventures update.  See ya =)